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Source #7: Jordan vs. James, 10 years in: Who is the best NBA player of all time?

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Source #7: Jordan vs. James, 10 years in: Who is the best NBA player of all time?

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A comparison of the two athletes after 10 years in the NBA

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by Shlomo Sprung

As long as there is sports talk radio and avoidable TV programs like "First Take," there will be a debate on who is the greatest basketball player who ever lived. The following is going to make this writer look like a big, fat hypocrite, since there was a June article on this site, by this very writer, with the headline "Please stop comparing LeBron James to Michael Jordan."

But we can't help it, can we?

LeBron James now has two NBA titles over the first 10 years of his career, with four NBA Finals appearances over that span. Jordan won three championships in as many Finals appearances over that same span. A decade is a nice point to look back and compare to give the reader a nice break from the season previews and preseason hype.

Right off the bat, there's some really bad news for people looking for a definitive answer on which player is better. It's really, really, really close.

James started his career right out of high school, so there was an inherent learning curve right out of the gate. The Cleveland Cavaliers missed the playoffs in James' first two pro seasons. He also didn't have much talent around him at the time. The Cavs went 35-47 in his rookie season with Carlos Boozer and Ricky Davis playing major roles along with Zydrunas Ilgauskas, Drew Gooden and Jeff McInnis. Boozer and Davis left, and the latter three were the only others to average double figures in scoring in James' 2004-2005 season, when Cleveland managed to go 42-40.

James finally reached the playoffs in his third season after the team added a new coach in Mike Brown and complementary players Larry Hughes, Flip Murray and Donyell Marshall.

Jordan entered the NBA after his junior season at North Carolina. The Bulls made the playoffs in his rookie season at age 21 despite a 38-44 record and Orlando Woolridge and Quintin Dailey being the team's second and third offensive options.

The next season, the Bulls got a rookie bruiser named Charles Oakley and a breakout season from Sidney Green, but went 30-52 because Jordan played just 18 games due to a broken foot. This was somehow good enough to reach the playoffs anyway, but the team was quickly swept by the Celtics despite Jordan averaging nearly 44 points per game.

A Michael Jordan team did not clear .500 in the regular season until his fourth season in the league, 1987-1988, when Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant came aboard and Doug Collins was coach.

So it could be argued that James' early seasons were more successful right away despite being younger, especially after the Cavs reached the NBA Finals in just his fourth season. James was just 22 at the time. After being ousted from the playoffs by the Detroit Pistons "Bad Boys" in three straight seasons, Chicago finally got over the hump and reached the Finals in 1990-1991, Jordan's seventh season.

The difference between their first Finals appearances is that Jordan's Bulls won in five games as he was named MVP, while LeBron's Cavs were swept by San Antonio.

After seven seasons, things appeared pretty even. James and Jordan both had just one Finals appearance each, with LeBron losing to Boston twice and Orlando once.

In his eighth and ninth seasons, Jordan won two more NBA titles and Finals MVPs before announcing his first retirement. His 10th year was the truncated 1994-1995 season, during which he announced a comeback in March.

After his seventh season, James left Cleveland for Miami and has reached the Finals in all three years, winning twice. Through 10 years, Jordan holds a 3-2 edge in championships and Finals MVPs. James has a 4-3 edge in Finals appearances and regular-season MVPs.

The numbers for these two all-time greats are through Jordan's age-31 year and James' age-28 year.

Filed Under: Tagged With: Analytics, Air Jordan, All time, championship, Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers, forward, greatest, guard, LBJ, LeBron, LeBron James, Miami Heat, Michael, Michael Jordan, MJ, NBA, NBA Finals, playoffs, title Columns, NBA, Shlomo's Stat Box, Sprung

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Jordan vs. James, 10 years in: Who is the best NBA player of all time?

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by Shlomo Sprung As long as there is sports talk radio and avoidable TV programs like "First Take," there will be a debate on who is the greatest basketball player who ever lived.

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A chart comparing Jordan, Bryant, and James.

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"His Airness" reigns.

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How James can become the greatest.

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An article comparing Jordan and James, along with the video source.

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A decade ago, LeBron James began his NBA career, and he has been chasing the legend of Michael Jordan ever since. It's not his fault so much as it is ours. Right from the start, we wanted to see James in the bigger picture, wanted to somehow quantify the magic we were seeing each time he took the court. This kid from Akron was so big, so strong and so good that the stakes needed to be higher, the challenges we presented him with greater.

This week the LeBron versus Jordan debate seemed to come to a head as James' disappointing performances in the first three games of the NBA Finals left many wondering if the comparisons were invalid, or at the very least quite premature. Many considered Thursday night's Game 7 to be a deciding moment for James, a chance for him to prove the merit of those comparisons -- or put an end to them once and for all.

In some ways, James did both.

His thrilling performance in Game 7 reminded us all just how special and otherworldly he can be. He put up the kind of stat line a Finals MVP should: 37 points, 12 rebounds, four assists and two steals. He made the Spurs pay for giving him space, draining five 3's and hitting nearly every open jumper they gave him.

Even the "haters" -- and there are still so many -- had to give it to James on Thursday night. He played with heart and confidence, he finished strong, he spent less time flopping and complaining and more time making plays, and when the final seconds ticked down, his first move was to congratulate a Spurs team that gave the Heat all they could handle.

In winning back-to-back regular-season MVPs and NBA titles, James joined a select few -- only Bill Russell and Jordan did it before him. And just like Jordan in 1993, James played in his third straight Finals after having led Team USA to a gold medal in the Olympics the previous summer.

If greatness is decided not just by a player's talent, but also by the hardware he collects, then James is certainly keeping himself in the conversation for greatest of all time.

On the other hand, James' inconsistent play in his four Finals stands in stark contrast to Jordan's superb performances when the spotlight shone the brightest. At times in this series, James was so invisible, it seemed absurd to compare him to Jordan, who saved some of his biggest, best performances for the Finals.

A few days ago, a friend said to me, "Sports are like time travel: What happens at the end changes the meaning of the past."

For James, this season's end -- a second straight NBA title -- makes another less-than-perfect Finals just a footnote to his growing legend rather than statistical proof that he can't meet the standards of those that came before him.

James' offensive woes in the first three games of the Finals were troublesome enough for those curating his legacy, but it was his play near the end of regulation in Game 6 that nearly spoiled the narrative entirely. Ray Allen's season-saving 3 to force overtime Tuesday night erased a disastrous stretch for James, helping ensure that his failures were just a part of the story and not the root of the tale.

In a four-minute span late in the fourth quarter, James had two turnovers, two missed shot attempts and an offensive foul. If Allen hadn't forced overtime, James' season would've been remembered not for the Heat's incredible 27-game win streak or his regular-season MVP award, but rather for his inability to finish when it counted.

Instead, James got a rewrite. His mistakes in the fourth quarter were a low point from which to rise back up again, and he did, helping the Heat to an overtime win. That set up Thursday night's tour de force, a title-clinching effort that will certainly keep James' early-series struggles from making the championship DVD.

For the team, the end result is what matters, but when it comes to James' legacy, the past cannot be rewritten so easily. In order for the "best ever" debate to continue, James must keep up with the impossible expectations set for him by Jordan's example. And so far, he simply hasn't.

Jordan famously won every Finals in which he played, never once requiring a Game 7. James has come up short in two of his four trips to the Finals so far, and his Heat needed all seven games to dispatch the Spurs.

In almost every one of the Finals in which he competed, Jordan improved upon his regular-season stats. Meantime, in all but one of the Finals in which James has played, his point totals and shooting percentages have been lower in the Finals than in the regular season. In the 1992-93 Finals against the Phoenix Suns, Jordan averaged 41 points per game. Forty-one! The lows were never as low as the highs were high for Jordan; he never scored fewer than 22 points in a Finals game. When Miami lost to the Mavericks in the 2011 Finals, James averaged just 17.8 points per game.

We won't know for many more years what the whole of James' career will look like, or how his legend will stack up. The Heat could be on their way to a three-peat -- or maybe even that eight-peat James so famously crowed about when the Big Three were introduced. In fact, James could end up winning so many titles and breaking so many records that Jordan's efficacy in the Finals becomes an afterthought.

But for now, there's really no debate. James may be a champion again, but Jordan is still the G.O.A.T.

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espnW -- LeBron James great, not greatest

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A decade ago, LeBron James began his NBA career, and he has been chasing the legend of Michael Jordan ever since. It's not his fault so much as it is ours. Right from the start, we wanted to see James in the bigger picture, wanted to somehow quantify the magic we were seeing each time he took the court.

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Source #2: "Visualizing the James vs. Jordan Debate

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Source #2: "Visualizing the James vs. Jordan Debate

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An article examining the two athletes.

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Aug 24, 2012

Tom HaberstrohESPN Staff Writer

Close

ESPN.com NBA analyst since 2010

ESPN.com Insider researcher in 2009

Developer of NBA DRAFT Initiative database

Getty Images
Who's better at this stage, MJ or LBJ? Let's visualize it.

Here we go again.

Talking to ESPNChicago.com on Thursday, Dwyane Wade commented on the eternal "LeBron James vs. Michael Jordan" debate and framed the discussion with a golf analogy.

"I don't know if (James) has the ability to surpass (Jordan) or not," Wade told ESPNChicago.com during a promotional event for his Wade's World Foundation. "That's yet to be seen. My version as LeBron being on par with Michael is this: They're both on the golf course. Michael's on the 18th hole. LeBron is somewhere on like the fourth hole. He's got a long way to go, but he's on par to get to the 18th hole.

"I think everyone knows that (James) is a phenomenal, phenomenal player. He's one that we haven't seen, with the makeup of a 6-8 guy who runs as fast as any point guard, jumps as high as any center, and has the ability that he has to do so many things. But Michael Jordan is the greatest player of all time, that's who everyone shoots for. So it's going to be hard to surpass that."

Like Wade, the "James vs. Jordan" debate has always struck me as a bit premature, because the argument rarely follows the form of "At James' age..." or "At this point in James' career..." All too often, it boils down to a comparison of ring counts, which doesn't seem fair to James who, to go along with Wade's golf analogy, hasn't finished the front nine yet.

But this is sports and in the sports world, people want to eat the cookie dough before it's baked. Even the NBA's greatest players pale in comparison to Jordan's endless line of credentials and accolades -- especially ones who haven't even hit 30 years old. Like James.

Is Wade accurate when he says James is "on par" with Jordan so far?

Comparing James and Jordan's numbers has always been a tricky exercise because they started at different point in their careers. James went straight to the NBA after high school while Jordan spent three years at college so this inevitably blurs the "so far" part of the equation. Do we compare what Jordan had done at James' age of 27? Or do we compare James to what Jordan had done through his ninth season?

We'll do both later, but here's a look at their basic and advanced statistics through age 27. We'll include usage rate (USG) which estimates the percentage of possessions that a player used while on the floor and player efficiency rating (PER) which bottles up all the box score statistics into one measure of productivity on a per-minute basis where 15 is average.

LeBron vs. MJ (cumulative per-game stats)

Right off the bat, this statistical comparison confirms something that always has been true: they are pretty great but in different ways. Jordan was a better scorer whereas James has been more well-rounded statistically. Jordan has the edge in the scoring categories but James has been superior in rebounding and assists. Interestingly, Jordan has the upper-hand in PER (30.2 vs. 27.2) despite James' advantage in the rebounding and assist columns. Not that PER is the end-all, be-all but it captures most of what we're getting at here: as remarkable as James has been thus far, Jordan has the numbers on his side.

It's here that we bring in the championship variable. James won his first title at a younger age than Jordan (he was 28 when he won it in 1991), but Jordan had already won three titles through his ninth-season. Whether you use age or experience as a denominator depends on your personal preference, but if we're wondering whether James can catch Jordan or where he is on his path, age seems like the more appropriate choice because it's probably a better indicator of how much is left in the tank than experience.

Let's try looking at this a different way. We can analyze Wade's claims that James is "on par" with Jordan by visualizing their career arcs.

Is James really on Jordan's path?

Check out the customizable Google Motion chart below (data courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com).

Right now, it's displaying PER as they age, but you can tinker with this all you want. I've included all basic stats and some advanced stats for you. If you want to see how James and Jordan compare by points per game in each season, click on the vertical axis labeled (PER) and a menu should pull up with a whole bunch of stats. Choose "Ppg" for points per game.

Now, you can literally see James is right there with Jordan.

Want to check out how many total points they scored through their ninth season? Click the vertical axis and choose "PTS" and then click on the horizontal axis where it says (Age) and choose "Season." Boom.

Here's one I find interesting. I've included Win Shares, Basketball-Reference's all-in-one metric that estimates how many "wins" a player contributed to the team's bottom line every season. If you choose "totWS" on the vertical axis for total Win Shares, you'll see that James leads Jordan when you look at age (again, on the horizontal axis). But if you switch "Age" to "Season," Jordan has James beat so far.

That encapsulates the Jordan vs. James debate. You could build a solid argument that James is more accomplished at his age, but not if you go by seasons played.

Another thing: you can even change the size of the data points by clicking on the right "Size" menu and you can also change the color to represent one of the statistics of your choice. For example, say you wanted to compare their PER's but also know how their minutes per game (Mpg) compared. Change the color from "Unique colors" to "Mpg" and there you go.

So who's better at this stage of their career?

Probably Jordan. There's no easy answer, but we can have a little fun trying to get there.

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Aug 24, 2012 Tom HaberstrohESPN Staff Writer Close ESPN.com NBA analyst since 2010 ESPN.com Insider researcher in 2009 Developer of NBA DRAFT Initiative database Getty Images Who's better at this stage, MJ or LBJ? Let's visualize it. Here we go again. Talking to ESPNChicago.com on Thursday, Dwyane Wade commented on the eternal "LeBron James vs.

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Numbers Never Lie

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1. Michael Jordan is clearly the best basketball player of all time.

2. LeBron James is the best basketball player in the history of the NBA.

3. There are many key qualities one must have to be an extraordinary basketball player.